2 Ebola patients headed to Ga.

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Nancy Writebol, seen working with children in Liberia in 2013, will be taken to Atlanta.

Associated Press
August 02, 2014

ATLANTA — Two American aid workers seriously ill with Ebola will be brought from West Africa to Atlanta next week for treatment in one of the most tightly sealed isolation units in the country, officials said Friday.

One will arrive Monday in a small private jet outfitted with a special, portable tent designed for transporting patients with highly infectious diseases. The second will arrive a few days later, said doctors at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, where they will be treated.

It will be the first time anyone infected with the disease is brought into the country.

The private aircraft based in Atlanta was dispatched to Liberia where the two Americans — Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol — worked for US missionary groups. The State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are assisting the groups in the transfer.

‘‘The safety and security of US citizens is our paramount concern,’’ said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

A Department of Defense spokesman said Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga., will be used for the aircraft.

The government is working to ensure that any Ebola-related evacuations ‘‘are carried out safely, thereby protecting the patient and the American public,’’ Harf said.

Ebola is spread only through direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids from an infected person.

The aircraft is a Gulfstream jet fitted with what essentially is a specialized, collapsible clear tent designed to house a single patient and stop any infectious germs from escaping. It was built to transfer CDC employees exposed to contagious diseases for treatment. The CDC said the private jet can only accommodate one patient at a time.

Brantly and Writebol are in serious condition and were still in Liberia on Friday, according to the North Carolina-based charity Samaritan’s Purse, which is paying for their evacuation and medical care.

An Emory emergency medical team arrived in Liberia on the chartered jet and evaluated the patients, and deemed both stable enough for the trip to Atlanta, said Emory’s Dr. Bruce Ribner.

Brantly, who works for Samaritan’s Purse, was treating Ebola patients at a Liberia hospital. Writebol also worked there for another US mission group called SIM.

The Emory isolation unit has two beds, a hospital spokeswoman said. It opened 12 years ago and was designed to handle CDC workers if they became infected while working on dangerous, infectious diseases.

It is one of about four such units around the country for testing and treating people who may have been exposed to very dangerous viruses, said Dr. Eileen Farnon, a Temple University doctor who formerly worked at the CDC and led teams investigating past Ebola outbreaks in Africa.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola, although Writebol has received an experimental treatment, according to the mission groups.